You know he loves you when
by Crazyangel1
Summary: Take your minds out of the gutter people...Grissom helps Sara conquer her fear of spiders.


**Summary**: Take your minds out of the gutter. Grissom tries to help Sara conquer her fear of spiders.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own Grissom, Sara or the spider. I did the editing on this fic so I guess the spelling and grammar atrocities are all mine. Whoopee!

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**June 2006. Note from the Fic Maintenance Unit (the author):** I did a punctuation face-lift and a bit of present tense verbsremoval (which have _no_ business being in a story written in the _past_ tense). I hacked off all description of action I had attributed to dialogue and I corrected a few spelling mistakes. I might have missed other mistakes, if you see them, let me know. Now I shall go back to reading "The Monk" by Matthew Lewis. Good novel, I recommend it.

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After a soft knock and a 'come in', the door swung open. Grissom looked up to see a radiant Sara. She waved a paper in the air.

"I have the results you wanted," she announced as she made her way to his desk.

Grissom's eyebrows rose. "So soon?"

"You know Greg works for you and for you," she paused two feet away from his desk, "o-o-onl. . .y. . .the. . .the tarantula's on your hand."

Grissom's gaze remained on the multi-legged creature resting on his hand and he could almost hear the spider muttering _DUH_. The tarantula decided to explore the rest of Grissom's arm and without a noise, one leg at the time, started up his wrist.

"Ah-huh," Grissom said, keeping an eye of the arachnid's whereabouts. "I was aware of that, I'm not aware, however, of the results you still hold in your hand."

Sara was a bit paler than usual. Her eyes looked like two black plates, staring at the moving dot with legs on Grissom's arm. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Right, the results, you want them, right?"

"Before I die of old age if possible." The tarantula reached his shoulder and decided to make a pit stop there. Grissom's neck moved backwards to stare at his shoulder.

Sara's upper lip lifted upwards and she sucked air though her teeth. Crazy loveable man, she thought.

She squirmed and struggled to remove a stain from the floor with the tip of her shoe. "Sure but. . . but aren't you gonna-"— she swallowed with effort— "put it back in its place?"

Grissom pursed his lips and shook his head 'no'.

He reached over his shoulder and scooped up the spider. The arachnid flinched and seemed to contract to a ball at his touch.

"Sara?"

Seizing the opportunity of having 8-legged trapped in Grissom's grasp, Sara thrust the lab results over his desk and recoiled as soon as Grissom freed the spider again, this time on his hand.

"Yeah?" she said, pretending to look innocent, hands clasped behind her back.

"Are you. . . " He narrowed his eyes. ". . . afraid of it?"

Sara snorted a laugh, took a surreptitious step backwards towards the door and waved a hand.

"What? Me? Me afraid of that hairy tarantula? Nope," she lied. She bit her lower lip, trying to suppress an emerging smile.

He gave her one of his I-know-you lopsided smiles and rose of the eyebrows combo. "Come here," he said.

Not being able to ignore a direct order and dash out of Grissom's office, Sara attempted a different escape strategy. "What for? You already have your results. I should be heading back."

. . . to the hospital to donate half my liver to scientific research, she thought.

"Does he really scare you? He doesn't look scary to me." He lifted the creature to his eye level. The arachnid stared back at him through multiple eyes. Grissom looked up to a much prettier, sexier sight.

"Don't give me that look," Sara warned, titling her head. Grissom frowned. "And don't frown at me either, I know when I'm about to turn into one of your behavioral experiments. I already feel like one of Pavlov's doggies."

"Come here," he waved her closer with his free hand. "Trust me," he said. Sara, who was almost out of his office, took a dubious step forward.

Grissom arched an eyebrow. The sight was certainly something.

"Closer," he repeated locking gazes with her. Sara glanced sideways, pressed her lips together and took another step forwards.

"Closer, Sara. I won't bite you. He might but. . . " Sara recoiled immediately.

Grissom chuckled. The expression on her face, the sheer terror. "Easy, it's a spider not a Pit Bull," he explained with a smile that made Sara momentarily forget about the arachnid.

Momentarily.

"For you information, I have them both filed under the same category: scary and potentially dangerous."

"Give me your hand." He outstretched his own, palm up, waiting for her hand.

Sara made a sound, like squeal, that Grissom had never heard before. Like the wordless child version of 'do I have to?'. The sound was fascinating.

"Don't whine like Nick, that's not your style," he said. "Now give me your hand." He flexed his fingers twice and Sara grudgingly complied.

"What's my style?" Sara asked, trying not to think of his hand around her wrist.

Grissom thought about all the times he'd sent Sara to do something she wasn't particularly eager to do and a subsequent flash of images of her face glaring at him paraded across his brain. The expression was exactly the same, only the clothes and backgrounds were different.

"Deadly glares and silent scowls. Now, I'm going to ease it to your hand."

Grissom slowly moved his other hand next to Sara's reluctant one. She leaned over and rested her elbows on his desk. Her feet ready for a sudden leap backwards if things got ugly.

"Oh, I don't know about this Griss. I better go, I have paperwork to do."

The arachnid seemed confused by all the shifting, grabbing and moving and didn't know where to go. Grissom leaned closer to Sara's hand, without noticing how close he was getting to her _face_.

Come on, he thought, climb on her hand, don't be shy.

Grissom spoke and Sara listened attentively, fighting the urge to faint. Their eyes were locked on the creature.

"You can't walk around the world being afraid of spiders, at least not this one," Grissom said, shaking his hand against Sara's as an encouragement to the arachnid.

It worked and Sara shut her eyes close the second the first furry paw settled on her hand. "Why not? So far I've survived without psychological trauma."

"Let me re-phrase it for you then: I can't have one of my CSIs being afraid of these wonderful creatures. Don't pull away, your dragging my desk across the office," he said, glancing down at Sara's feet, stubbornly pushing herself and her hand away from him.

"Is it. . .oh God . I-I-I watched _Arachnophobia_ once you-you know," she stammered.

Grissom glanced up and for the first time realized how close they were. He studied her face and indulged himself in a smile before widening the distance between their lips and speaking.

"Stop scrunching your nose, you look like you sucked on a lemon," he said.

She chuckled but her eyes remained closed. He chuckled. "Open your eyes, Sara."

Sara peeked at him though one half-open eye first and then opened the other. She glanced at Grissom, then at his hand, still firmly gripping hers and then at the moving spider.

_Moving _spider?

"Jesus Christ, it's moving. Don't move, stay, staaaaay." The creature would listen to reason.

Grissom bit his lower lip and rolled his eyes. "See? Is not so bad, is it?"

Sara didn't look up, her gaze was stuck to the tarantula, slowly creeping up her arm. "I'm having a very silent heart attack."

"Don't move too much, you might scare him and he'll bite you," Grissom said, his face serious.

Sara's eyes popped out of their sockets and her voice come out like she was one breath away from passing out. "Excuse me, I didn't hear you right."

"It was a joke," he informed.

She narrowed her eyes. "You know, I haven't strangled you yet because I'm paralyzed by fear."

The spider found a nice place to rest on Sara's upper arm.

"He likes you, I can tell," Grissom said, nodding his head. Sara smiled briefly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah I like him too, now make him creep back to your hand so I can breathe again."

"Say 'bye' to Sara." Grissom retrieved the by now dizzy arachnid and lifted to the level of Sara's eyes. She was still leaning over his desk. The spider slowly lifted up one of his legs, the equivalent of a goodbye wave.

Sara's eyebrows rose. "That was cute. Disturbing, but cute."

Grissom put the spider back in its habitat and rubbed his palms together. He picked up the Lab results and glanced at Sara from behind the paper.

"You can go now, you said you had paperwork to finish," he said.

Sara huffed. "I should have you know, I expect an 'Outstanding' with three gold starts in 'Openness to new experiences' in my next evaluation," she said.

Grissom looked skywards and meditated for a second. "Make it four stars."

**El fin**

Well, if you liked it please review, it makes me write more.


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